Aero Blasters: Trouble Specialty Raid Unit is a 1990 horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Kaneko and licensed to Namco. The game was originally released in the arcades in 1990 and was subsequently released for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 (as Aero Blasters) and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (as Air Buster in North America) in 1990 and 1991 respectively. In Aero Blasters, the player controls a fighter jet also designed for space travel and shoots enemies, collects power-ups, and defeats bosses to advance levels. As a console game, Aero Blasters had the distinction of being two player simultaneous, which was rare among side scrolling shooters on home consoles at the time; all games in the Thunder Force, Gradius, and R-Type series were only 1 player on the home consoles.
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I've been in a shmup mood lately. Last year I've played quite a few shmups, allowing myself a save at each level to keep my loadout. This year, I finally felt like I was becoming pretty good, often saving every few levels just to give myself a backup point in case I die and lose all my upgrades Gradius-style. So of course there had to have been a game that destroyed that notion.
Aero Blasters is pretty miserable. As expected of a good shmup, it looks and sounds fairly good, but everything else is just a bit off. The enemies never respond to your attacks, so it's hard to know what's invincible or not. Furthermore, your ship is SLOW, and combined with the fact that some levels inexplicably start having ice physics but for space, it becomes nearly impossible to maneuver. Imagine dodging bullet pattens when the lightest tap sends your ship for a walk in the park.
Power-up system is fairly reasonable: P icons power up your main gun, while every other icon switches your sub-weapon. You die - you lose everything. You also have an infinite bomb at your disposal at all times: just hold a button for a second or two, and it'll clear all bullets and do minimal damage to enemies. It recharges pretty fast, too, and you will NEED it at the final level, which combines "ice physics" with moving walls that also move along with the camera, enemies that I'm pretty sure can't die, and a flickery boss.
As for the writing of this review the graph of grades for this game on Backloggd looks like a middle finger, which is fitting, but which I will have to skew a bit.
Aero Blasters is pretty miserable. As expected of a good shmup, it looks and sounds fairly good, but everything else is just a bit off. The enemies never respond to your attacks, so it's hard to know what's invincible or not. Furthermore, your ship is SLOW, and combined with the fact that some levels inexplicably start having ice physics but for space, it becomes nearly impossible to maneuver. Imagine dodging bullet pattens when the lightest tap sends your ship for a walk in the park.
Power-up system is fairly reasonable: P icons power up your main gun, while every other icon switches your sub-weapon. You die - you lose everything. You also have an infinite bomb at your disposal at all times: just hold a button for a second or two, and it'll clear all bullets and do minimal damage to enemies. It recharges pretty fast, too, and you will NEED it at the final level, which combines "ice physics" with moving walls that also move along with the camera, enemies that I'm pretty sure can't die, and a flickery boss.
As for the writing of this review the graph of grades for this game on Backloggd looks like a middle finger, which is fitting, but which I will have to skew a bit.
Noooo, not the mid shmup to start the year.
To be serious it's just ok, movement feels super loose and imprecise and somehow still too easy and short. There's some good tunes in the soundtrack though
To be serious it's just ok, movement feels super loose and imprecise and somehow still too easy and short. There's some good tunes in the soundtrack though
Average horizontal shooter that is 2-Players. Stage three on-ward difficulty increases, particularity the anti-gravity ice-like stage where your constantly sliding- which was a nuisance to navigate through.
I feel a lot of retro games from the 90's just have way cooler front covers than a lot of modern games do. I mean look at this beauty, it's like Starscream from Transformers speeding through orbit with a random background explosion. I love it.
As for the actual game it's a pretty good shoot 'em up overall. You control A 'Blaster Fighter' jet plane across six levels using a variety of weapons you can collect liberally. I do mean that as containers with about six power ups at once are found in generous quantities. There are 7 weapons types; Reverse shot, Six way shot, Satellite guns, Homing and three different types of missiles as well as power ups for your main weapon the Vulcan gun. In all honesty I feel the last one is the most important upgrade available. Sometimes the Reverse shot and Homing missiles can be helpful on some small enemies but overall the wall of firepower in front of you will be doing most of the work. Additionally there is a charge shot that damages all enemies on the screen though only the smaller enemies will die from the blast however the recharge time to use it is fairly short and doesn't require collecting or shooting to power up.
Where Aero Blasters really shines compared with Arrow Flash the last Mega Drive Shoot 'em up I played is in the level design and variety. Initially it seemed a little the same with the first level flying across a sky and city landscape followed by a slower cave level but things changed where that level suddenly sped up having to speed through narrow sections with warning signs for the obstacles ahead. The level after that the parallax scrolling came at an angle as if flying into the atmosphere with ships and enemies coming out of the clouds in front of you before finishing in orbit with a gorgeous horizon view of the planet below. From level 4 due to being in space the controls change so that pressing a direction the ship's velocity won't stop due to the vacuum meaning you need to constantly change direction to control it's direction and momentum.
This is a really neat idea but I feel this is where my experience with Aero Blasters slightly loses it's positivity as this can get a little irritating at times and creates an artificial difficulty. The last level inside what seems to be an alien mothership is also a real let down, it's absolutely full of moving obstacle puzzles and is really hard (I'm not good at shoot 'em ups to be fair) and I felt my earlier enjoyment of this title slipping as I directed poor Starscream into yet another moving block where I misjudged the small gap I had to traverse through. The wikipedia page for this game has this quote:
"MegaTech magazine gave the game 78%, commenting on the "excellent graphics, sound and playability", but criticising the low challenge factor."
Which is hilarious to me considering how insanely hard I found the last couple of levels. Overall though I had a good time with this one. The music is pretty fast paced with a nice beat, the action is good and the graphics are crisp and bright with some nice level aesthetics and interesting mechanics. Just slightly too hard for me on the backend, there's a reason the title banner for this game here says 'Game Over'.
+ Some nice unique level design/mechanics
+ Colourful, vivid visuals.
+ Action packed gameplay.
+ That front cover.
- The last couple of levels are way too hard.
As for the actual game it's a pretty good shoot 'em up overall. You control A 'Blaster Fighter' jet plane across six levels using a variety of weapons you can collect liberally. I do mean that as containers with about six power ups at once are found in generous quantities. There are 7 weapons types; Reverse shot, Six way shot, Satellite guns, Homing and three different types of missiles as well as power ups for your main weapon the Vulcan gun. In all honesty I feel the last one is the most important upgrade available. Sometimes the Reverse shot and Homing missiles can be helpful on some small enemies but overall the wall of firepower in front of you will be doing most of the work. Additionally there is a charge shot that damages all enemies on the screen though only the smaller enemies will die from the blast however the recharge time to use it is fairly short and doesn't require collecting or shooting to power up.
Where Aero Blasters really shines compared with Arrow Flash the last Mega Drive Shoot 'em up I played is in the level design and variety. Initially it seemed a little the same with the first level flying across a sky and city landscape followed by a slower cave level but things changed where that level suddenly sped up having to speed through narrow sections with warning signs for the obstacles ahead. The level after that the parallax scrolling came at an angle as if flying into the atmosphere with ships and enemies coming out of the clouds in front of you before finishing in orbit with a gorgeous horizon view of the planet below. From level 4 due to being in space the controls change so that pressing a direction the ship's velocity won't stop due to the vacuum meaning you need to constantly change direction to control it's direction and momentum.
This is a really neat idea but I feel this is where my experience with Aero Blasters slightly loses it's positivity as this can get a little irritating at times and creates an artificial difficulty. The last level inside what seems to be an alien mothership is also a real let down, it's absolutely full of moving obstacle puzzles and is really hard (I'm not good at shoot 'em ups to be fair) and I felt my earlier enjoyment of this title slipping as I directed poor Starscream into yet another moving block where I misjudged the small gap I had to traverse through. The wikipedia page for this game has this quote:
"MegaTech magazine gave the game 78%, commenting on the "excellent graphics, sound and playability", but criticising the low challenge factor."
Which is hilarious to me considering how insanely hard I found the last couple of levels. Overall though I had a good time with this one. The music is pretty fast paced with a nice beat, the action is good and the graphics are crisp and bright with some nice level aesthetics and interesting mechanics. Just slightly too hard for me on the backend, there's a reason the title banner for this game here says 'Game Over'.
+ Some nice unique level design/mechanics
+ Colourful, vivid visuals.
+ Action packed gameplay.
+ That front cover.
- The last couple of levels are way too hard.